


The Milk of Human Kindness

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 05:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1142017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephen Maturin’s childhood in Ireland comes to an end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Milk of Human Kindness

Though it was early May, it was still quite chilly and dark in the mornings inside the turf-thatched stone hovel in Achadh Mór in County Leitrim and Bridie Coolan took a long wooden spoon and a small bowl and served out a generous serving from the pot of hot cooked oats, pushing the hen out of the way to reach the pot on the fire. She poured a splash from the small pitcher of fresh cream on the top of the bowl and then put a pinch of sugar on the still dry peak and gave it with a very small silver teaspoon marked with an "S" on the base of the handle to the very small boy wearing a long coarse wool shirt and nothing else who was seated on a stool at the table. He was past his fifth birthday, but still very small of stature and almost painfully thin. He took it and peered at her with his peculiarly pale blue eyes, put his hands together and bowed his head.

 _"Beannaigh sinn, a Thiarna, agus iad seo do thíolacaí atáimid ag dul á gcaitheamh, trí Chríost ár dTiarna, Áiméan."_ They said the blessing together and she gave him a _peaindí_ full of clabber to have with it.

"My Brideen, why is the cream thin and the clabber thick when the clabber was made from milk, which is thinner than cream?" He said, looking in the cup.

"Eat thy porridge whilst it is hot, Stíofán, my dear." He looked at her gravely. "Now, dear joy, what are thy great blue eyes saying as thou peerest at me so?"

"Thy face says that thou dost not know why the cream is thin and the clabber is thick. So thou dost not answer my question but thou wilt not say thou dost not know." He said very dispassionately. She frowned.

"Because the clabber is not fresh and the cream is, child."

"But why does it become thick because it is not fresh?"

"It just does."

"Why is the clabber so tart when the cream is sweet?"

"The _púca_ has made it so since Brian Boru rode one, long ago. The _púca_ spoils milk, my _doty_ , just as a storm will as well."

"Was that a reward or a punishment for Brian Boru?"

"So many questions!" She picked up her own _peaindí_ of clabber, as they now owned three tin cups, three bowls, and three spoons in addition to Stephen's own spoon. " _Slán an bhó,_ Stíofán."

" _Slán an bhó_." Stephen repeated. "Why do we say that, my Brideen, why do we wish health to the cow?"

"Because she is so good to us and gives us her milk, my _bouchaleen bawn._ That is mother love in your cup from Scoth." The Coolans had come up in the world and now had a Jersey milch cow called Scoth, which meant "Blossom" in Irish. Scoth had born twins, a bull calf and a freemartin and Stephen had studied every aspect of them with fascination until they were sold and taken away. He now spent hours a day observing Scoth. She was extremely placid and gentle which was fortunate, given he liked to play under her flanks, expressing milk from her teats into the mouths of the kittens and cats who followed him to where she was staked out grazing to strip out the foremilk and then sprayed the thick, cream-rich hind milk into his own mouth until it was overflowing with the warm, rich, creamy froth and he was forced to finally swallow it. He had to hide from Bridie because she screamed in fright that Scoth would surely trample and kill him, but Stephen knew better. He first stroked above her udder like her calf nuzzling her and she would not move an inch, until he yanked hard on her teat before he moved away, like the calf pulling off.

"What does the _púca_ look like, Brideen?" He asked eating the minute amount of sugar off the top of the porridge before starting the rest of it.

"Tis a shapeshifter, _a chuisle_. It might be a huge black horse with golden eyes or a rabbit or a black goat or a goblin or worse."

"Is it evil? Is it from the devil?"

"Tis hard to say. Sometimes the _púca_ brings luck and sometimes misfortune."

The baby started to cry and Bridie rose and retrieved him from the oat straw pallet, her first living child, her son, Séamus, a big healthy six month old boy whose coppery hair was so fair that he appeared quite bald. She put him to her breast. Stephen stood up and came next to the baby, stroking the side of her bare breast as he bent down and kissed Séamus' face and putting his index finger in the baby’s fat little fist, shaking it gently and saying, “Séamus, Séamus, who is the good baby? Who is the sweet, quiet baby? Tis Séamus.” and Séamus pulled off the nipple and cooed at him, smiling toothlessly before resuming nursing. Bridie touched Stephen’s arm.

“Sit down and eat, _doty_. Finish thy food.” Stephen sat down on his stool and resumed eating.

The Coolan's rent pig, a piebald young barrow, came in through the open doorway and Stephen patted it as it came and snuffled his bare feet. "Come Bagún, good pig, fair pig, fine pig," Stephen crooned and it wagged its tail in pleasure as he scratched behind the pig's ears. They heard the dogs barking in the lane. "Someone is coming, Brideen!" He said, ready to get up and hop for joy. They very rarely had actual visitors on horses that made the dogs bark, usually it was other children coming to play with Stephen. Bridie's husband, Kilian, would not be back until after dark.

"Eat thy _leite._ " Bridie said. "Finish it before thou gets up." She picked Séamus up, putting his chin over her shoulder and pulled her shirtwaist down and went to the open doorway

Three men were approaching the door. One was a man Bridie knew from the village who worked with the post, Tomás Curran, the other a stranger, evidently a foreign gentleman from his clothes and his hair: long, dark ringlets and like no Irishman's she had ever seen. His clothing marked him as foreign and obviously a gentleman, for he wore a black velvet coat, a satin waistcoat and dark green silk breeches. He had white silk stockings and glossy black shoes. The third man was the priest, Father Richard Kirwin, newly appointed that year to Achadh Mór. Cromwell's soldiers had destroyed the village church almost a hundred years beforehand and Father Kirwin now said Mass outdoors on a stone altar in a sandpit that they called “Cnoc an Aifrinn,” a few hundred feet west of the ruins of the old church. The Penal Laws were such that no new church could be built. Poor Father Kirwin lived as a near fugitive, chiefly visiting parishioners in their homes, even as the majority of their homes were stone hovels, like the one he stood before now.

“God and Mary be with you.” She said to them and they bowed to her. She invited them in and they came in the doorway. Tom Curran stepped forward.

"God, Mary and Patrick be with you, Bridie Coolan. This mogall feller has come from Spain with a letter for you. He asked me to introduce him to Father Kirwin and then to lead him here and so I have."

"Holy Mother of God!" She cried and crossed herself. She knew it was bad news. No one was hand-delivering a letter from Spain to Ireland with anything but bad news. She looked at Stephen. He was looking at her curiously. The Spaniard bowed to her and handed her the letter. She sat down, broke the seal and tore it open. She was not a learned woman by any means, but she could read, if she could not really write beyond signing her name in Irish. The letter was written in the Irish hand.

 

_20 March 1775_

_Barcelona_

_Mistress Bridget Coolan of Achadh Mór_

_Contae Liatroma_

_Cúige Chonnacht_

_Dear Mistress Coolan,_

_I, dear Madam, am a fellow Irish countrymen serving as soldier and aide-de-camp to and from the regiment of Commandante Ciarán Maturin, serving in the Army of His Most Catholic Monarch Carlos III, King of the Spains and ruler of Castilla, Aragon and Navarre. Given the challenging circumstances heretofore present in Barcelona with obtaining translation from Catalan into the Irish tongue, I have been requested to compose this letter by Don Ramon d'Ullastret i Casademon of Ullastret, the particular friend and executor of the estate of Ciarán Maturin to advise you of the very sad news of the sudden death of the Commandante on 1 March, nearly one month ago, from a plague called the enfluenza which they call the <<Grip>> here in these parts, in Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain._

_This letter is being carried by a Senyor Enric Picasso, a trusted servant of Don Ramon. Though he does not speak Irish, he speaks Latin well and will procure a translator in Ireland. He has been sent to you in order to retrieve the child, Stíofán Maturin y Domanova, the godson of Don Ramon and to bring him to his godfather in Barcelona at your earliest convenience, departing Dublin if possible no later than 1 September of the Year of Our Lord 1775 in order to commence his education. Senyor Picasso has been instructed to assist you in any manner necessary for the child’s journey, including provisioning him with appropriate clothing, a trunk for his personal effects and assorted dunnage. Additionally, Senyor Picasso is prepared to make you appropriate financial arrangements so that the child’s sudden departure need not be a hardship to you; two years of his customary stipend shall be paid when his leave is taken._

_His Grace, William FitzGerald, the Duke of Leinster, maternal cousin to Commandante Maturin, is by now apprised of any and all details concerning the child should any problem arise and you should apply to him accordingly. He is Stíofán's closest living relative in Ireland to the best of my knowledge._

_I close, dear Madam, by extending Don Ramon’s very sincerest compliments and his undying gratitude to you for your tender care of his very dear godson, Stíofán._

_Your most humble and obedient servant,_

_Alaois Ó Broin_

_Teniente, Primero Regimento de Cazadores de Olivenza_

_Barcelona_

 

Bridie put the letter down and looked down at Stephen, who had finished his porridge and had arisen. He stood next to Bridie's skirts jumping up and down.

"What does it say, my Brideen, what does it say?"

"Hush, child. Go outside to play and see if Scoth needs water." He happily ran out the door.

Stephen had been brought to her when she was seventeen and he was four months old, a gaunt, tiny baby who cried plaintively as his Catalan wet nurse had handed him over to Bridie. The arrangement had been made by Ciarán himself, who had accompanied his son and his son's wet nurse to Ireland along with his particular friend, Don Ramon. Bridie's priest, Father Morris, had been instrumental in making the connexion months before Stephen was born in Catalunya. Ciarán had himself been wet-nursed by Bridie's aunt, not far from Acadh Mór. Bridie's own infant had just died of meningocele, a congenital condition, three days before Ciarán had arrived in Achadh Mór and she had received a swaddled Stephen gratefully into her aching, empty arms and full, pain-filled breasts. She wept as she nursed him for the first time and told Ciarán she would treasure him as her own and blessed him a thousand times for bringing her his son.

Tears filled her eyes. She had always known this day would come, but she had hoped she would have more time with her Stíofán. He was, alas, not her son to hold onto and now he was a poor, fatherless child to be taken a thousand miles away. He had been her only consolation for years as she lost baby after baby and she loved him as much as if he were her own child. His precocity had delighted her -- he had spoken in full sentences by his first birthday and could say the Ave Maria on his own by his second. She had lavished him with all the love and nurturing in her power to give him. The older women of the village had told her that she should wean him after her third miscarriage in a row and she had ignored them. She had promised Ciarán to nurse him until he lost the desire to do so and she did, only night-weaning him after his fourth birthday, when she was heavily pregnant with Séamus and exhausted. He had stopped nursing entirely of his own accord in the last three months.

“Father, dear, pray read me this letter, if you please.” She said and handed it to him, in case there was something she had not understood. He read it to her and she wiped her eyes. “Can you speak to the Spanish gentleman?” The priest nodded. “He will go home to his mother now?” The priest translated her words into Latin and they all looked at Enric Picasso’s face as he spoke, evidently sorrowfully.

“He says that Stíofán’s mother died from the influenza six weeks before Ciarán Maturin died.” The priest said, translating. She gasped and held her fist in her mouth.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, my poor little lamb.” She said and a tear ran down her face. "Poor dear motherless little creature!" Try as she might, she could not still her tears entirely.

 

That night, she lay down with Stephen on the straw pallet to put him down for the night and she pulled the blankets around them, kissing him. The pig came from the fireside and dropped on the other side of Stephen as was its custom, its massive bulk snuggling comfortably against him and Stephen patted it fondly. He yawned as Bridie rubbed his back.

"Stíofán, thou art now such a big boy and such a clever boy and thou hast so many questions that I cannot answer. Thou art going to go away to school at the end of the summer, dearest soul, and thou wilt learn so much that thou wilt come back to Achadh Mór and tell thy Bridie why the clabber is thick and the cream is thin and why babies get fevers and how the lightning knows where to strike." He rolled over and looked at her in the dim light of the room.

"I do not wish to go away." Stephen said. "Why shan't I learn here instead?"

"Because Achadh Mór is very small, _a chuisle mo chroí_. We do not even have a church. There is no school for thee to go to now. Thou must go away to learn."

"Wilt thou go too? Thou and Séamus?"

"I cannot. This is my place. Thou art going to go to Spain and meet fine Spanish ladies and gentlemen and study in a fine school with the Holy Fathers and become a very wise and learned man and I will be very proud of you and tell everyone that my Stíofán is a great man."

"What is Spain?"

"Another country where tis always sunny and warm and the trees are covered with fruits. It is filled with fine ladies and gentlemen and more churches than thou might imagine and princesses in golden gowns. And priests, Stíofán and no tithes. Thou wilt be a fine gentleman and dance with princesses."

"Are there cows and pigs and chickens in Spain?"

"Of course."

"Why will I go there, to Spain?"

"Because thou wast born there, _a chuisle_. It must be so beautiful there that tis like heaven itself, warm with a warm sea and sunshine all the time." She kissed him. "Now close thine eyes, for all love, and let us say our prayers." He closed his eyes and they said the _Pater Noster_ together and he fell into a sleep filled with dreams of princesses dancing with priests beneath trees heavily laden with fruit.


End file.
